I recently got a fantastic deal on a never-used Giant Revive factory EB (AKA Spirit) gathering dust in a dealer showroom. The only problem is a completely dead original Li-Ion Mn battery pack. It probably hasn't had a charge in several years.

Assuming that Giant no longer offers OEM parts at this point, can anyone point me toward a suitable replacement? Google hasn't been much help, and this is my first EB.

The pack is branded as a 24V Revive Energy Set. The bike appears to use a mostly Panasonic system, and the battery pack (beige) can be removed from the Giant housing (blue) without exposing the actual cells. This is what I'm hoping to replace.

It has a 5-blade power interface on the end. The only markings here are:

NKY183B01
MH72-2679
421A
MADE IN CHINA

It came paired with a Panasonic NKJ024 (A) charger that connects to 4 of the 5 contacts. That number pops up on a few .de sites, but never with reference to a matching battery (that I can find). Since the only charging indicators are on the battery itself, I suppose there's no guarantee the charger is working correctly either.

I'd be grateful for any guidance or input. The three-speed hub on this beast is barely tolerable unless I can get power flowing again.

Thanks.

Attachments

Battery pack and charger

Last edited by OctateZero on Aug 23 2013 2:04pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks. I spoke with Electric Vehicles NW and they confirmed Giant no longer offers batteries (or any parts) for this model. After a night of research, that seemingly leaves me with three options:

1. Rebuild the original battery pack with newer Li-ion cells.

2. Find someone who knows about batteries like this one that are very common on ebay.de. The housing is different, but they use the same Panasonic charger so I wonder if the internals are a match.

3. It looks like the 24V/10AH LiFePO4 pack from Ping might be small enough to fit into the original housing (and therefore become an invisible modification if handled correctly). Does that raise any red flags, powering the original system with a different type of battery of similar specs? The original battery fits neatly under the seat and my goal would be to keep it in the same place.

Thanks.

Battery pack location

battery.jpg (16.22 KiB) Viewed 2542 times

Last edited by OctateZero on Aug 23 2013 7:51pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would like to see the inside of the pack since I believe the cells could be replaced with some of the newer 18650 cells by Sanyo or Panasonic or others. I might not be too difficult or expensive. Just a suggestion for a safe battery that would be similar to the original for a reasonable cost.
otherDoc

Agniusm/A123 AMP 20 36 volts on the Steini has been taken off.
2x16000 Multisport from HK now gone as they died after 2 years
New Luna 10S bottle battery 13.6AH now on mine
Relatively New 10S4Px2 for wife's bike giving 20ah @ 40 volts home made Panasonic from Tumich. BMS's rule.

After looking at this circuit board, I was surprised at its complexity. Could battery management and the "brain" of the bike (speed governor, motor control, etc.) all be contained inside the battery pack? If so, I wonder whether it would ever accept anything other than this exact arrangement of cells--and whether the rest of the bike would function at all with anything different.

dnmun wrote:it looks like there are two sets of pouches and the sense wires from each run back to the same spot on the BMS. measure them all there. either 7 or 8 pouches in series.

Two sets of 7. Measuring the voltage on the sense wires when plugged into the charger, I get:

1. .422
2. .409
3. .253
4. .497
5. .500
6. .497
7. .494

... if I'm doing this correctly (probes side by side, moving down the row). I get about 3V on the combined wires, slowly increasing. That's after being plugged in for about 30 minutes; I left it to charge overnight late last week.

dnmun wrote:you need to get the BMS pcb free and take a picture of both sides.

Here's a few pictures after further disassembly. I've added captions with the details I noticed. Thanks for your help.

The back side of the PCB that was sealed against the pouches. The five wires along the bottom go to the external connector, the four on the top connect to each set of pouches..

1.JPG (96.7 KiB) Viewed 2487 times

The top side of the PCB. There's a single button and a five-LED readout on the left (dead, of course). Sense wires come in on the right.

2.JPG (105.76 KiB) Viewed 2487 times

The wiring to the pouches. I'm not sure about the small black pair between the sense wires ... it disappears into the middle of the stack and is connected to THC G/+ on the PCB.

3.JPG (92.34 KiB) Viewed 2487 times

The external connector with its wiring freed up. The blue wire has a 10A/99°C thermal cutoff inline.

I guess my main question at this point is whether something else (like a Ping LiFePO4 pack with integral BMS) could just drop in and replace everything seen here. Their 24V 10AH is relatively inexpensive and seems close to the original specs.

Should I be able to just wire it up to the factory +/- power leads going into the bike?

do you wanna see if you can find some lithium ion pouches the same size and replace those? the size may be fairly standard so you could look on ebay or alibaba to try to find the same parts. soldering the sense wires to an aluminum tab is not easy and requires special 95% tin solder but it is available on ebay.

those cells are definitely discharged but you might wanna bypass the BMS and use the charger to try to put some charge back into the cells. we can walk you through how to do that but you will need alligator clips on jumper wires to make the connections from the charger to the cells. or you can solder a wire to the solder where the sense wires are soldered onto the tabs and then bring those wires, there would be 4 for B+ and B- on two sets of pouches, out to a plug you could attach to the charger plug.

edited, the other option is to find 2 sets of 7S lipo and then wire them into the pack directly in replacement to the lithium ion since they charge to the same potential. hobby king does offer 7S packs and if you got 5,000mAh on each that would be a significant battery. but i would recommend a safe spot for charging since we don't know what the risk is for that set up.

Showing my e-bike ignorance here, but does the rest of the bike's electrical system need this exact PCB in order to function? If so, I guess my only real option would be to attempt to charge these pouches or connect new pouches to the existing board.

If not, I think I'd rather swap the whole thing out for a pre-made pack with a new BMS. I'm not too confident in my soldering ability to reconnect all the leads and sense wires between the original PCB and replacement pouches as you described. I could certainly handle connecting a new one to the existing power leads on the bike, though.

What are the dimensions of the pack and the space it fits into. It seems like a project to revive it. Ping or HK LiPo seem like good alternatives. You should trace the wiring to see if there are additional electronics or if you just need power. Controller max voltage?
otherdoc

Agniusm/A123 AMP 20 36 volts on the Steini has been taken off.
2x16000 Multisport from HK now gone as they died after 2 years
New Luna 10S bottle battery 13.6AH now on mine
Relatively New 10S4Px2 for wife's bike giving 20ah @ 40 volts home made Panasonic from Tumich. BMS's rule.

I am interested in a Giant Spirit bike as well.
What did you finally decide to do about the battery issue?
Is it possible to remove the entire OEM system and replace it with a comparable controller, throttle , battery?

Hi,
I also have a chance to buy a brand new looking spirit barely used ....it still has the tiny rubber prongs sticking from the tires.
I started to buy it but after reading this information about the battery I decided not to buy . from the pictures it appears that the electrical system is extremely complicated for a bicycle . the owner told me that it works perfectly but it seems that the battery is not replaceable . Ive only seen pictures of it and I haven't taken it for a test ride as the bicycle is 100 miles from me.
Noel
Florida Keys